Latest / Tales From Aztlantis / Episode 97: Zombie Columbus Vs. the KKK!

Transcript

Episode 97: Zombie Columbus Vs. the KKK! · Tales From Aztlantis

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to Tales from Ostlantis, the podcast where we take you on a journey through Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and along the way, we challenge pseudo-historical distortions and confront the disinformation that too often surrounds these very topics.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_04: We are your hosts, Curly Tlapoyawa.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: And Ruben Ariano Tlakatecat.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm calling this episode Zombie Columbus versus the Ku Klux Klan.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh, can we combine the Zombie Columbus to Zombi Lumbus?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Zombalumbus?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_04: Zombalumbus.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_04: Zombalumbus.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_04: That sounds like a uh a music festival.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_04: Hey.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: Zombalumbus.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_04: That we could charge a lot of money for.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: This year it's Zomba Lumbus.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Zombalumbus.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_04: Well, dear listeners, here we go again.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: Like a brainless zombie emerging from the grave, a long dead statue of Christopher Columbus has lurched back to life in order to reign terror on Washington, DC.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: Dun dun dun.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: And as his statue's reanimated corpse claws its way up from the depths, it pauses momentarily to once again draw breath and utter It's me, a Christopher Columbus.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: My granddaughter and I just watched the uh Super Mario movies.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: That was a great flick, wasn't it?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: It was fun.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was fun.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was fun.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: I know it got a lot of shit.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: People were criticizing it like it's it's it's Mario.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, come on, what are you expecting?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_04: What do you expect?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: Good grief, people.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: And if you don't know what I'm referring to, dear listener, well, allow me to elucidate.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_04: I've been wanting to use the word elucidate for a while.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, elucidate.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: On March 22nd, 2026, the Trompito administration installed a 13-foot one-ton marble replica of a Columbus statue on the White House grounds near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_04: But this was not an entirely new monument.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: You see, it was constructed in part from fragments of the same Columbus statue that protesters toppled in Baltimore six years earlier before dumping it neatly into the city's Inner Harbor.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: That monument was one of many Columbus statues targeted during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, as critics pointed to Columbus's role in the violence, exploitation, and devastation of indigenous peoples in the Americas.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_04: The new zombie statue was commissioned by the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, and is part of the White House's celebration of the nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: According to the organization.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: So they they get it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: Dr.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_04: Tlakataka was showing showing off his awesome t-shirt.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_04: According to the organization, artists recovered pieces of the original marble from the harbor and incorporated them into the reconstruction.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_04: After Baltimore officials declined to reinstall the monument, and good on you, Baltimore, good on you, the group turned to the White House to give it a new home.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, the usual gang of morons, war criminals, and pedophiles that currently occupy the White House were more than happy to oblige.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_04: As the White House posted on social media.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he's honored as such for generations to come.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: I like how they um whoever wrote that was obviously referencing the the Sopranos episode that's been made into a meme where they're like, in this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: So they just thought they were being so fucking clever, right?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: In this White House, whatever.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, hold hold on a minute.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: But but it it makes sense because I mean the way you describe the usual gang of morons, war criminals, and pedophiles, I mean, that's on brand.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's Christopher Columbus in the next one.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's apropos.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: It's apropos.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_04: It fits, it's on brand.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly like you just said.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: It stands to reason.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_04: It tracks, as you should say.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: Regular listeners will recall that I dug into the cult of Christopher Columbus way back in episode 87 of this podcast.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: And while doing research for that episode, I stumbled across a 2017 opinion piece published on The Hill with the headline.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: In attacking Columbus, Antifa tries to finish what the clan started.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_04: What a headline.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: Obviously, that's pure propaganda, trying to sell us Columbus as a misunderstood choir boy who linked two worlds together with nothing more than good intentions and a hearty handshake.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: This revisionist nonsense was written by leaders of something called the National Christopher Columbus Association, which is a PR firm whose only client is a 15th century war criminal.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: The article may be eight years old, but given the recent resurrection of the Columbus statue, I felt that its central thesis deserved a swift, long-overdue ass-kicking.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_04: So the article opens like bargain-bin political sermon.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_04: In an effort to fight hateful rhetoric, it begins, which is a clever feint pretending sympathy for anti-racist protesters before pivoting to the real grievance.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: The desecration of Saint Columbus, patron of genocide, and European exceptionalism.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: The authors huff and puff about tragic irony warning us that the protesters toppling Columbus statues are apparently continuing the work of the Ku Klux Klan.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_04: Because you know they are, right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's the central thesis.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_04: The entire argument teeth precariously on a poorly thought out pseudo argument.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: You see, the clan despised Columbus for being Catholic and Italian.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_04: Therefore, anyone who criticizes Columbus must also be in league with the clan.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's a truly absurd example of tortured false equivalence.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: Something meant to sound smart and biting to truly stupid people.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, it's a lazy, moronic, and upside down retelling of history.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I love, like by the transitive properties, the clan hate didn't like Columbus.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: Therefore, if you don't like Columbus, it's like uh you know the Hitler was a dog lover.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_04: Therefore, if you love dogs Hitler was also a painter.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: So Yeah, yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_04: If you're a painter, you ergo uh by this logic You're also a Nazi.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: You're also a fucking Nazi.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_04: Although if Hitler had been a poet, I would agree with that uh I would agree with that uh uh analysis.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: So the editorial states Those in the dark hoods inadvertently did the bidding of those in the white hoods, who for years sought to expunge statues and celebrations of the Italian Catholic explorer who sailed under Spain's banner precisely because he was an Italian and Catholic.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: But wait a minute.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Italian?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Was he an Italian?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's that's something we could.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: Do these people know the meanings of words at all when they when they say these things?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's fucking pure goofball reasoning.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Except, of course, Columbus isn't being targeted by indigenous activists, Antifa or otherwise, because he was Catholic, Italian, or misunderstood.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_04: He's criticized because he kickstarted centuries of enslavement, massacre, and cultural obliteration.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: The kind of blood-soaked imperialism that still echoes in every land grab, ice raid, and border wall.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_04: But you won't hear that from the Columbus Association.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_04: No, they're too busy performing ideological CPR on a corpse that's been dead for 500 years.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_04: And then comes the history salad.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_04: They toss in a few academic quotes.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_04: Philip Wayne Powell on The Black Legend, along with some cherry-picked Spanish legal trivia, all meant to dazzle the reader with footnotes and pseudo-intellectual smoke and mirrors.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_04: Never mind that none of it actually refutes the core criticism of Columbus, that he trafficked indigenous women to members of his crew, he enslaved indigenous people, he had their limbs cut off as punishment, and he had their bodies sent back to Spain as proof of his productivity.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_04: All the frantic hand-wringing and fake scholarship in the world can't transform that nightmare into a tale of heroism.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: The article even tries to breathe life into the tired myth that Columbus forbade slavery.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: Really?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and that he was somehow benign toward Native Americans.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, he's a good old boy.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so it's nonsense.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_04: The authors conveniently ignore Columbus's own letters, boasting about shipping, and I'm quoting directly from Columbus, slaves as many as can be sold, unquote, or his proud claim that with fifty men we could subjugate the entire population.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_04: No, dear listeners, you can't call that benevolence unless you purchased your moral compass from a Mar-a-Lago gift shop.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_04: You like that?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_04: I felt good.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_04: I felt very proud of myself when I came up with that line.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_04: You're quite the comedian there, Curly.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_04: Wonk Wong.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: And then comes the sanctimony.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: But wait, before we get to the sanctimony, I want to go back and touch on this idea that this is the black legend in operating here.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, which one is it?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Was he Spanish or was he Italian?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Because the black legend supposedly only applies to the Spanish.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: And and let's say that, for instance, if you are someone who subscribes to the legend of the of the black legend, then you could also say that that the quotes you just gave of Columbus's own letters could be English black legendary at play here.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe he didn't really say slaves as many as could be sold.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe he said as many uh visitals as can be procured to be sent back for your majesty's um whatever, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Anyhow.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, and also I really like how that that quote you read where they're they they really thought they were being clever when they said those in the dark hoods are doing the bidding of those in the white hoods.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_04: The whitehoods.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_04: Of course, invoking the image of Antifa with the black hoodies and stuff.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: So black block.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, these guys thought they were being very clever when they wrote this nonsense.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_04: And then comes the sanctimony.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: Here we go.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Our modern iconoclasts would do well to think before they smash and realize that when the black hoods follow the dictates of the white hoods is the clan that wins and history that loses.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_04: What fucking tortured logic, man?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like are they do they even listen to this stuff when they read it?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do they read it back to themselves?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And realize how stupid they sound.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it's a rhetorical question.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: Of course they don't.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: But what I love is the idea that these people ostensibly have friends or uh partners who they've read this to, and their partners never bothered to tell them, like, yeah, that sounds really dumb.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I could just picture stupid people sitting around being like, oh shit.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_04: Like, man, you really got these guys.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: Your word prayer.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or your word.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe they really hate them deep down inside.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, no, yeah, that's great.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead, thumbs up.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_04: Do it.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_04: Do it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_04: So it's as if the protesters with spray paint and ropes are the true threat to civilization, rather than centuries of state-sanctioned brutality.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_04: This whole piece reeks of panic.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's like the last gasp of a dying myth that desperately clings to the fantasy that white Christian explorers brought light to a dark and savage world.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_04: The website truthaboutcolumbus.com, which is run by this organization, the National Christopher Columbus Association, leans hard into this revisionist narrative.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_04: I found the press release that they put out announcing the launch of their pro-Columbus website.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: And in this press release, they state Show us your birth certificate.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's that's a different truther.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's it, yeah.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: The news site exposes the Marxist roots of today's anti-Columbus movement and draws attention to the long history of bigotry behind the rhetoric, including anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic language still used today.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, the Ku Klux Klan opposed celebrating Columbus's achievements because they saw him as a threat to the purely white and Protestant vision they had for the United States.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: It is both tragic and frightening that far-left groups like Antifa, like that's a group, right, are picking up where the KKK left off.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: Americans need to recognize that this attempt to destroy one of the great figures in our national experience is part of a shameful racist tradition.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: Fucking hell.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: The website itself goes on to say the following Attacks against Christopher Columbus and opposition to Columbus Day are nothing new to American history.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, in the early 20th century, one group attacked the man and the day throughout the country.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: The Ku Klux Klan.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: Bum bum bum.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: Motivated by bigoted opposition to the Italian explorer and his Catholic faith, the assault came on multiple fronts.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: In addition to seeking the repeal of the holiday, the Klan also wrote against it and disrupted its celebration.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: Even a public display of a Columbus statue was opposed.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: The Klan sought to oppose Columbus from coast to coast, including the following attacks.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: In the 1920s, the Klan attempted to remove Columbus Day as a state holiday in Oregon.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: In 1924, the Klan burned a cross to disturb a Columbus Day celebration in Pennsylvania.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: A Klan publication, The American Standard, ran an article titled Columbus Day, a People Fraud, in 1924.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: In 1927, the Klan successfully opposed the erection of a statue of Columbus in Richmond, Virginia, only to see the decision to reject the statue reversed.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: So all this is evidence of what now?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: I lost the plot here.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: What what is it?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_04: They just, yeah, I mean, obviously they just lean hard into like the clan did this.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_04: The clan, like really trying to reinforce this idea that you must be in league with the clan if you if you agree with this, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's fucking so how do they reconcile the fact that the the same people who protest against the same statues against the Confederacy are the quite the same people that protested the statues against Columbus?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: Like how does that even how do those two worlds intersect to give us the clan?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: I think you're asking far too much uh from their their logic.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: So what makes this all so grotesquely comic is the attempt to recast Columbus, the man who planted the first flag of European conquest as a victim of white supremacy, rather than one of its most prominent symbols.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's historical gaslighting at its most brazen, a funhouse mirror, where oppressor becomes oppressed, and genocide is rebranded as a misunderstanding linking of two worlds.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: In the end, the whole thing plays out like some sort of bizarre seance with loyal defenders of empire summoning the ghost of Columbus to absolve America's original sins.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_04: They speak of higher values, but what they're really mourning is the loss of control over the narrative.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's the crumbling of the old myth.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_04: Myth?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_04: God damn it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's the crumbling of the old myth that conquest equals civilization.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_04: So no, gentlemen, the people tearing down those statues and protesting against Columbus Day aren't finishing the clan's work.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: They're dismantling its blood-soaked altar.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: The real trag tragic irony is you've confused a burning cross for a beacon of enlightenment.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_04: And that, my friends, is professional grade.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_04: What the fuck, Christopher Columbus?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_04: You're here.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I like how uh in that quote that you read, they're talking about um anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic language still used today.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, wow, is that is that an ad for Tales from Oslantis?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_04: Because if you want some anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic language, we've got a podcast for you.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_04: Look no further than Tales from Oslantis.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_04: But man, yeah, just this it's sad, it's pathetic, and and you know they think that by using this, like this is their their silver bullet, right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_04: Well, the clan didn't like him, so you know, therefore you don't like him, you're in league with the clan.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's so idiotic, I can't even think of another word for it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it just occurred to me, I don't know how recent some of the the quotes that you gathered are uh like how far back they date.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, some of them seem to be pretty recent, but I'm not sure they're as recent as since the statue was reinstalled.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm wondering now that the statue has been cobbled together.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Zombified uh together to give us this new zombie Columbus on the grounds of was it the White House or where exactly?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's on the White House.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: And um since the White House is currently run by white supremacists and openly KKK supporters, if not members themselves, how does that jive now with this idea of the people who are against uh I I'm I'm even confused.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not even I'm I'm having a hard time trying to put these things together in my head.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it feels like I'm having a stroke when I'm trying to fucking figure out their logic.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: Make it make sense as a kid.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they used to say I don't know if they still say that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: But um yeah, it doesn't it doesn't chime, it doesn't make it doesn't ring true.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: There's it uh I don't know.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's like he's a symbol of white supremacy, like he's actively used as a symbol of white supremacy by avowed, self-avowed, self-declared white supremacists.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: But their argument was that he was acting no, he's actually the victim of white supremacy.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's like this uh what did um Orwell call it?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh double doublespeak?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_04: Doublespeak, right?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's like seeing this in action where they're taking, you know, no, he's actually the victim of white supremacy, and you're the racist if you're against him.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's ridiculous.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like I tell my students in class when we're um looking at the late 19th century and when you had the the whole eugenicist movement taking place, social Darwinism, and how in this country, like if you were a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, you were at the top of that food chain and you were at the highest level of humanity, right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so everybody else fell underneath that order uh that was uh developed at that time by by racists, let's call them what they were basically racist who were using pseudoscientific uh explanations to try to uphold white supremacy, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And so within that framework, within the category of white, so at the very top you have the white Anglo sex and Protestant.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're a white person from Europe, but you you happen to be a Catholic person, then you're below the WASP.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: Wasp is at the top, and so I wonder if what's going on here is that when it can when it when it's convenient for them to lump all white people from Europe together for this grievance, they're like, oh, you're being anti-spanish and you're being anti-Catholic and you're being anti blah blah blah blah blah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then but when it doesn't suit them, when it's the KKK that's in that's at the forefront was like, well, what we really mean is this thing.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we're over here, we're at the top of the food chain.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you might be white, yeah, adjacent, but you're not really white like us, white like me.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's like it's like the concept of whiteness is what they're championing ultimately, and then they're like picking and choosing who gets to associate themselves with that concept.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_04: The pyramid of whiteness, right?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: There's a pyramid of whiteness, which looks exactly like a KKK hood.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's a white hood, it's a white pyramid.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_04: And so and and I'm glad you brought that up because it's it's not like uh you know European immigrants did not face fucking racism and being treated like shit and violence by their white folks who came before them.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I I think that should be common knowledge, but honestly, I don't know even know what the fuck is being taught in school these days.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_04: Nothing.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_04: So who knows if that's common knowledge.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: We're not teaching anything in school.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you, as an educator, we don't teach anything in school.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: You don't?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: You just you just will in that fucking the T.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_04: Not even you just project it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, that's I'm showing my age.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_04: Your age here.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: Because I I just remembered how excited.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, the problem is that just don't read anymore, period.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: They don't pick up books.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's the problem.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, call me what you want, judge me uh if you will, but that's the that's the main issue.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: People don't read.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: R-E-E-D.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: People don't read.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and then even if they're reading, like, are they able to understand concepts and ideas?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 29:57
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's okay.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, they do not.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's a sad state of affairs, my friend.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_04: Well, because Columbus Day itself um was born out of an act of anti-Italian racism and violence, right?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was uh an 1891 lynching of eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans, or at least that's what well there's different there's different cases, different instances of this kind of uh violence taking place across the country because uh, you know, at one point the Irish weren't considered truly white, um the Italians um and various other, you know, scandin uh not scandal um Eastern European, Southern European peoples were even though they were European, they were still considered other, you know, the the other category of European whiteness because they weren't white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Nordic right whites as or the Aryan stock, if you will.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I wonder, I mean Yeah, I mean Because you have the issue too with uh as we've discussed before, people within the Mexican American community who see themselves as white people now, right?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: And they've they've adopted these ideas that just you know 30, 40, 50 years ago wouldn't have occurred to them because that experience of being a white person was not something that that they would have experienced firsthand.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: See the the problem is that because we have a very poor educational system in this country, a lot of young people don't realize that some of the things that they have glom on to and and believe in and and and support are things that would have been antithetical to their ancestors.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: And there's also this this this notion that we have an indigenous culture of passing on through oral tradition stories and knowledge is something that has been lost within our communities, and so the the you know older generations aren't necessarily passing down the stories to the younger generations of the things that they experienced growing up, and so a lot of that context is being lost, and people just now assume that everything's okay, and I can just pick and choose whatever I want and and you know behave like a complete you know jerk or at at best just someone who is ignorant of the facts and and spewing nonsense like these people appear to be, right?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's even on the spectrum itself.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, I mean, and I say this because here in Dallas we had a similar incident that just recently took place that involves a statue that was removed just what six years ago this year now, and that was recently reinstalled.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: So on the uh morning of uh Monday morning of March the 2nd of this year, 2026, um the local sports ball team, the Texas Rangers Baseball Club, installed a statue that's uh called One Riot, One Ranger.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're from Texas or if you are a Texas Ranger fan, uh you know what that means.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's this allusion to this idea that all it took it was one Texas Ranger to show up to any incident, riot, altercation of any sort, and that one individual would handle the situation.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: This mythologized image.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of where we get the whole Lone Ranger show from as well.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, those of us that are old enough to remember watching it as a kid.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so it's the same mythos, right?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: This mythologized, Hollywoodized idea of what the ranger did, you know, the good guy on the horse, uh there to save the day, representing what's all good and mighty and exceptional about Texas and by extension America, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: And so that statue called One Riot, One Ranger, was reinstalled on the field.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's it's a statue that was originally located.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: If you know Dallas airports, if you've ever flown into Dallas, Dallas Love Field Airport, that's the the original airport before DFW, the international airport airport, was uh um uh created back in the late 70s, early 80s.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Love Field is the same airport, for instance, uh if you want to historicize it, where um Lyndon Johnson was sworn in after JFK was assassinated in in downtown Dallas, right?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: That that's the same airport, Dallas Love Field.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: So back in 2020, the a statue that had been sitting there in the main lobby, the main entrance of Dallas Love Field, going all the way back to the early 1960s, I believe, um, it was removed because it was um reported in a book that was written and published that same year of 2020.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: And if you recall 2020, we're in the middle of the pandemic.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is the year of Black Lives Matter.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: You have all these various protests going on.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same year when this Christopher Columbus statue was removed and and destroyed and thrown into was it a river, some kind of body of water, yeah, a harbor.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and and this the same, it's it's in the same context, right?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: So this book was this guy, uh Doug J.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Swanson had been working on this book, uh, and it was finally published uh that year, and in June of that year, 2020.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, the name of the book is Cult of Glory.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: Those of you that are interested, Cult of Glory, the bold and brutal history of the Texas Rangers.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, and so it was published in that year, and it by June of 2020, um, it was finally decided by the the Dallas City Council and Dallas officials that maybe it was finally time to get rid of the statue who all the way back to 1992, the early 90s, you had activists within the Mexican-American community calling for this statue to be removed because at least one council member uh uh at the time was uh a descendant of people, men who had been murdered at the Porvenir massacre down in South Texas back in the early 1900s by the Texas Rangers.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it was something that was very personal to this individual.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_03: And he had been calling since 1992 for this statue to be removed, and you know, he was ignored, dismissed, uh whatever, you know, because at the time it, you know, none of this had come to light.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: So the book, what what finally triggered the statue being removed in 2020 was that the book cites uh the daughter of the ranger Jay Banks was the name of this individual, if I have the story correct, I believe it was the daughter of this individual who stated that the statue that was at uh uh Dallas Love Field was mod the modeled after Jay Banks, that that Texas Ranger, and the problem with Jay Banks is that going all the way back to the 1950s in the post-um Brown versus Board of Education desegregation case of schools nationwide in 1954, by 1957, uh a lot of schools in Texas were beginning to be desegregated.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: And a local school here in the North Texas area, Mansfield, if I'm not mistaken, is the name of the little town, um, was refusing to desegregate.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so the governor of Texas at the time, uh I think the last name was Shiver, sent in Texas Rangers to different places, and it just so happened that Jamie Banks was sent to Mansfield to uh quell any kind of segregation uh activities taking place in that town, and there's a picture that someone took of him where he was so proud of what he was doing, and it's it's taken from like the bottom up, and so the the angle captures um in the background you see uh the facade of the school, and in the foreground to the left-hand side of the picture, there's a tree, and you have Jay Banks dressed in his Texas Ranger uh uniform leaning up against the tree, you know, in the stereotypical way of the leaning cowboy against the wall or against the tree.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: And but the the problem is that Mansfield was refusing to desegregate their schools, and hanging from the middle of that facade of the of the school was an effigy of a black person who with a noose around their neck, right?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so here we have a problematic individual who posed and modeled for this statue that had been prominently displayed in Dallas Love Field for all these years, decades, uh, and it was finally removed, and then lo and behold, just in March of this year, March the 2nd, the Texas Rangers decided that they would be the organization to bring it back after uh five years of uh it being in limbo, it was supposed to go to some museum in Waco, then it was um something else was you know happened with that museum and they couldn't really uh do what they wanted to do, so they didn't have space for it, or they they don't have any room for it anywhere.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so the Texas Rangers partnered with whoever is in charge of this this uh statue, and they said, Hey, we're the Texas Rangers, that's a Texas Ranger.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't guess they can come live over here in the ball field of the Texas Rangers, seriously, and and what gets me about the Texas Rangers, I've never been a supporter of the Texas Rangers, I could care less about the ball team.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a fan, that's your problem, not mine.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the Texas Rangers for me has always represented as a Chicano, as an indigenous person, as we were just talking about the KKK, what the KKK was for African Americans in the South, that's what the Texas Rangers were to indigenous people and Mexicans here in Texas.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're someone who continues to support them uh and to go to their games, again, that's your prerogative, but I refuse to do so by the sheer fact that they have the name the Texas Rangers.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's the equivalent for me, as for instance, the problematic name of what the Washington, DC football team that now calls us as the commanders, right?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same thing, right?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: And here you have this ball team saying, Yeah, it's okay, yeah, we'll we'll we'll take the statue, we'll we'll place it prominently in our ball field, in our in our ballpark, so that everyone knows that we support the Texas Rangers because you know that's that's Texas.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_04: So and the fact that they hated black people and slaughtered Mexicans, that's just icing on the cake.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_04: Give us your money though, yeah, yeah.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, how many Chicanos show up at fucking Texas Rangers games?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus, I swear.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: But what gets me is that you have this guy by the name of Russell Molina, okay?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: He's a board member of the Texas Ranger Association Foundation, right?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so if you can just picture a guy by the name of Russell Molina, tall, lanky, um, you know, I don't know if he describes himself as a Mexican American or what.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: Last name Molina, I would assume he's got some Mexican ancestry being from Texas.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm assuming he is born and raised in Texas, but he was a Texas Ranger, he's part of this association, and this is what he has to say, right?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: Moments that must be confronted honestly.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: He acknowledges that the history of the Texas Rangers is very flawed and and but he remains uh um or he maintains that the statue serves to honor the majority of the officer officers who lived up to the quote unquote ideal of service and sacrifice, right?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: So here we have an individual who I assume maybe I'm mistaken is from the Mexican American community, despite knowing the facts of what the Texas Rangers did to Mexican Americans and Indigenous peoples in the state.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: And he continues to support this idea of a statue celebrating this legacy, especially from this problematic individual who is known to have been part of the issue of allowing African American students to desegregate here in North Texas.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how how dare you, sir?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's my that's what I would say to you.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: How dare you?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: But I digress.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_04: Fucking clown.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so this statue, it's the same statue.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's the same statue.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's like the exact same statue.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a zombified Columbus and Ranger statue, it's this this very same exact statue.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_04: And when they decided to take it down, was it in response?
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like, were there protests over it that were ongoing?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, the you know, you had all these protests all over the place, and people started protesting and demanding that the statue be removed.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: And Dallas has has had a history that dates all the way back to the civil rights period where it always wants to get ahead of the game, right?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if there's stuff happening around the country and they notice hey, this this reckoning is gonna come for us, they try to get ahead of it, and to their credit, they try to get ahead of it to minimize the public disturbance that could arise from it, because Dallas has always been very protective of its um um image, especially within the aftermath of the assassination of JFK, because for many decades Dallas has been known as the city of hate for many reasons, and mainly because it's the place where John F.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: Kennedy was assassinated.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so, ever since, even before that, but ever since then, the idea uh within Dallas and the leadership in Dallas has always been to try to get ahead of it.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: And so they knew that there was already these calls that have been made for for years, like I said, going all the way back to the early 1990s, that this statue should be removed and finally in 2020.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: And and what what triggered it was that there was an excerpt of the book was published in a local magazine uh and and and it mentions J Banks by name.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: It published the picture of him uh leaning up against that tree, uh, and with the effigy of the African American and uh student hanging, and so they took the preemptive measure of saying, all right, that enough is enough.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_03: We've had enough calls, let's do it, let's let's get rid of it.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, to their credit, Dallas has tried over the years to get ahead of it and try to avoid things from escalating, right?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: But now you have the Texas Rangers.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: I guess maybe they reached out to the ball team and said, Hey, would you be willing to take this statue because it was originally supposed to go to this museum down in Waco, but it turns out that that fell through, so now we need to find a space for it.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's my understanding that it's not there permanently, it's kind of like on loan, but it could be a permanent loan if they never find another place to put it in.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_03: And and and the thing is that this not the same people, but another set of activists and protesters, uh, the day after it was unveiled, were there uh in protest saying, How dare you?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: We had this statue removed five years ago, six years ago, and here you are.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: What are you doing?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: What are you doing, Texas Rangers?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right, and and and going back to the icing on the cake, just a couple of weeks ago, and I only know this because it comes on the news, not because I care to to know about these things, but the Texas Rangers were doing this promo where they're uh on on a certain day that they were gonna play, um, that they were gonna be wearing this this uh the their baseball jersey that was gonna say the Hanos instead of Texas Rangers, the Hanos Rangers or something to that effect to honor the Hispanic tradition in Texas.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like really, really come on.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Are you serious?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: Get get real, get real.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, whatever, man.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my gosh.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's a bunch of bullshit.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_04: Well, here in in New Mexico we have our own our own monument.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there's the the Juan de Oneata thing, but oh right, right.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_04: Recently, so we there's another monument up in Santa Fe called the Soldier's Monument.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_04: And it's uh it's a cenotaph, right?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_04: So it's basically like a a replica of the Washington monument then and it it had been up uh since 1867 and it was 33 feet tall.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, this thing got torn down um because of the same thing, you know, protesters and what's cool in Santa Fe the majority of these protests against these monuments, these racist monuments, have been organized and led by indigenous women.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_04: So respect to all the women organizers that that uh get it.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_04: Together and kick everybody in the ass and tell them to get out there and do what's right.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_04: So they tore down this this uh monument and what it is is so it's you know there's four faces on it and the uh three of the faces reference uh I want to get this right.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_04: So they're they're dedicated to unnamed Union Army soldiers who died on the battlefields uh in in New Mexico territory during the Civil War, right?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_04: So that's the first three panels and then the fourth panel commemorates US soldiers who died, and I quote, in the various battles with savage Indians.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_04: And so the the fucking in 1974 somebody went and just chiseled out the word savages, right?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_04: The the savage part.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_04: But uh on October 12th, 2020, right, once again, uh the obelisk was toppled by protesters and it came down hard.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like it just it was totally obliterated.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so now they've got like this ugly box, uh plywood box, basically protecting it.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_04: What's left of it, like the foundation part.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_04: But recently, I mean, just within the last couple of months, Santa Fe has been trying to figure out if they're going to rebuild it.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_04: And people are like, no, what the fuck are you doing?
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_04: And they had this uh, you know, when they call for public commentary, they had like a city council meeting or whatever, and they asked for people to show up.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_04: And so I watched it on YouTube, they had live streamed it, and some of the fucking arguments being made were just like, what are you people talking about?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_04: Like one woman got up there and her whole argument was well, when the reference to savages, the savage Indians were the uncivilized ones, so like the Apaches and the Comanches, not not you Pueblo people, you're not the savages being referred to in the op in the the monument.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_04: So you shouldn't be offended, you know.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_04: It was the the actual savages, and it's like, do you hear yourself, you fucking moron?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's like it's like here in Texas when when people used to say, Oh, you're one of the good Mexicans.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_04: It's yeah, and that's basically it, right?
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_04: Like they're talking about the bad Indians, not like the good Indians, like you guys, like I love your jewelry, oh my god.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_04: So that was like the the arguments that that were being made.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_04: And then people, I mean, there was shouting matches were erupting, and you know, it was it's getting crazy.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: So I don't know what they're ultimately going to decide to do with this, but if they put it up, it's just a matter of fucking time before that thing comes crashing down again.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_04: And it should, if it goes up, it's and what's what's wild is is the uh Hispanos, speaking of white identifying people of Mexican American descent, the Hispanos have really glommed onto the soldiers monument as representing them.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: What?
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: And it's how because their argument is well, it was a Civil War battle, and a lot of Hispanos fought for the Union, and therefore it's honoring us in our heritage, and you know, you're just erasing history, and one guy got up and said, I'm proud that my ancestors fought in the Civil War and blah blah blah.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's like great, be proud of that, yeah.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_04: But don't shit on other people, like don't erect a fucking monument with racist bullshit on it, right?
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_04: And then try to make excuses for like, well, no, you know, I I I this monument resonates with me because of this part of it.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's like fuck, dude.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it doesn't matter that it's it's offending other people because it resonates with me in some specific way that it it it it it it makes me feel good about myself, even though it makes other people feel bad.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, forget those people, it's about me.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's my feelings, right?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's it's gotten ugly, man.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, even just in terms of the uh like the Juan de Oñate statue when that thing came down and you had a Hispano white nationalist there fucking shoot somebody.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_04: I remember that, yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_04: You know, so and it's wild because we were there and we had just left.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_04: We had left like maybe an hour before that happened.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's it's getting crazy because this country ultimately to try to wrap it up in a thought here.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_04: This country has never like had a reckoning with its fucked up origins or it's it's never reckoned with it, it's never sat down and had an honest conversation about it's fucked up the way that things got started.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like a truth and reconciliation commission of some sort?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, something like that, you know, but they've never like had the introspective moment of being honest, and they never will.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like you could see it.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: Anytime somebody tries to bring it up, they just fucking put their hands over.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, most people still can't even come to reference what happened to indigenous people as a genocide.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like we're not even fucking.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's it's that it's that basic.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like you if you can't even reconcile the fact that the Europeans, maybe not your ancestors, because there's a lot of people who've come over from Europe uh in the centuries after the initial onslaught who have nothing to do with that, right?
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I get that, I get that argument.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: But the thing is that we as a country collectively we have uh adopted this identity as people of this nation, right?
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Collectively speaking, we belong to this nation, right?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: If we live here, and so at the very least, we should be able to acknowledge yes, the first Europeans who came and settled here and who spread out from coast to coast did commit genocide against the indigenous populations.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_03: How hard is that to just say that, to accept it, to to realize it, right?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: And and people have a hard time with that because it makes them uncomfortable.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's the problem that we're having here in Texas with a lot of the going back to this idea of revising history, and and and I wanted to say a few things about that, if I may, about this idea of revisioning and how it gets um this negative connotation when people say, Oh, you're doing revisionist history.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, history is revisionist by definition, we're always re-examining the past because we find new sources and we find better ways of interpreting what happened, and we have various perspectives on what happened, right?
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the issue.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's the job of historians, right?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's not the problem.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_03: The problem is when you're trying to rewrite it in such a way where you're either omitting the facts or you are obfuscating things that occurred because they do not uh uh conform to your personal bias or your interpretation of history.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's when you have bad history, and that's what's happening here in Texas with public education.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: Going back to this idea of public education here in Texas, there's certain things that we can't teach anymore, or if we teach them, we have to do it in such a way where it it kind of muddles the waters and and and makes it sound like it's not as bad as it was, right?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_03: And that's basically what these people are trying to do over here.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like, well, it happened, uh it not you.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_04: We're not talking about you, we're talking about those people over there.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_04: Well, it's even happening on the national level, right?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_04: Where they're going out to the national parks and they're removing any literature or commentary on these sites or parks or monuments that might cast the history and heritage of the United States in a negative light.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's like they've got this predetermined outcome where they're like, no, the United States is great, it's the greatest place in the world, and then they're gonna fucking ignore and destroy anything that counters that narrative and only promote the things that reinforce that narrative.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_04: Regardless if it's bullshit or not.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_04: And it's all about just feeling good because they can't fucking cope with the fact that fucked up shit happened and they don't yeah, it's it's exactly what you said.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_04: It makes them feel uncomfortable and they don't know how to they lack the emotional intelligence to deal with history, and so the best thing to do is distort the history to fit with their feelings.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_04: Snowflakes, all of them.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, they're fucking candy asses, and they're the ones that that are always like, oh, you guys are so yeah, pointing to the fragile, blah, blah, blah.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_04: But they they can't deal with it.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like, look in the mirror, Bob.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, start with yourself.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_04: So let's come to terms with the truth, shall we?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_04: Wait, and there's a truth out there.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_04: There is a truth, and you know what I like to say about the truth?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_04: What's that?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_04: The truth is like medicine, Dr.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_04: Dlacka.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_04: That got it might not it might not always taste good.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_04: It might not it might not always taste good.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_03: I like that remix right there.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty good.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: You like that?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's the uh the remix version.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but it is always good for you.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_04: Excellent.